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Covid 19 Update:
At the current time we expect that the workshop can take place physically in Graz. If this should change, we will convert it into an online meeting. Also, if some participants cannot travel due to restrictions, we will make online participation possible.
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Organizers:
Philipp Berghofer (Institute of Philosophy, University of Graz, Austria)
Axel Maas (Institute of Physics, University of Graz, Austria)
The conference is organized around four topical areas:
1) Has the success of quantum physics in general and of perturbation theory in particular blinded us with respect to conceptual problems? Do textbook presentations represent genuine physical theories or are they more like recipes for solving suitable problems in which the success of the theory and the relationship to the real world remain somehow obscure? What can we gain from restoring conceptual clarity?
2) How to ontologically interpret gauge symmetries? Are they mere descriptive redundancy or do they have physical meaning? What does it mean to say that a gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken?
3) What candidates for manifestly gauge invariant approaches to the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism do we have? What are their virtues and shortcomings? What insights do we gain from comparing and contrasting different versions?
4) What are the ontological implications of manifestly gauge invariant approaches? How to conceive of particles? How to conceive of the relationship between particles and fields?